Entourage, with its relentless jokes about masturbation and the Hollywood inner circle, has finally run its course – although there is talk that a movie will round off the story in late 2013. So the final season, the eighth, isn’t really a finale after all – it’s just the warm-up. Can’t wait …
Still, bitching men can be extremely funny, and Johnny Drama and Ari Gold are comedy gold. And its format is more preferable to that of a sitcom in which all the characters have comic flaws to signpost what’s going to happen.
But if you dispense of these conventions, you need to give your characters depth or they’ll just go around in circles. By season four, it had settled into the same format every season – like a reality show.
Don’t let that put you off Top Shot in which top marksmen fire off against each other – like Survivor but with live bullets. It’s unashamedly one for the boys.
Just like Frederick the Great and the Enigma of Prussia (DRK, Mon 20:50 & Tue 18:55) is one for the historians. It dumbs nothing down, offering a fascinating take on a ruler whose thinking helped shape the Germany that twice took the world to war – 150 odd years after his death.
The miniseries The Sinking of the Laconia (SV2, Sat 17:30) and TV drama Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen (SV1, Sun 22:45) take us back to the first one, or thereabouts, but neither set the world alight.
Elsewhere, Pinter’s Progress (DRK, Tue 15:40) explores the playwright’s legacy with the help of luvvies; Mishal Husain meets Mazlan Othman (BBC World, Sun 15:30) is mainly about the Malaysian space programme; Infamous Assassinations tackles Anwar Sadat (DRK, Mon 21:50); there’s another chance to watch the return of Dallas (SV4, Mon-Wed 21:00) in case you missed it in July; we’ve got the 2009 edition of Hell’s Kitchen UK (TV3 Puls, Sun 06:55); Kidnap and Ransom (SV1, Sun 21:00) is back for a second season; and watch Secret Access – Air Force One (DRHD, Sun 23:15) Britney Spears – femme fatale (SV1, Sat 22:40) to learn more about what’s inside Barack’s plane and Britney’s brain.
